John wrote:
> The Hamburgers are rioting at the G-20.
Bitburger wrote:
> And looting. Don't forget to mention that the unwashed hordes are
> taking the opportunity to steal and physically attack innocent
> people (most of them just trying to walk to their homes and
> offices).
> That almost 200 police officers have also been injured by
> hooligans only seems to excite the American 'media'.
> I wonder how many of the looters were ethnic Germans? (Not that
> will ever find out-German born Africans, Arabs, and Pakistanis,
> Serbs, and Slovakian gypsies are always classified as 'native
> Germans'.
> I hold Merkel personally responsible for all the lawlessness in
> Germany. She has condemned Germany to slow death. This is the
> end.
The G-20 riots have nothing to do with immigration. Syrian refugees
fleeing from barrel bombs and Sarin gas couldn't care less about
climate change or globalization.
Most of the violent rioters are typically white upper-class elites,
probably like yourself.
John wrote:
The G-20 riots have nothing to do with immigration. Syrian refugees
fleeing from barrel bombs and Sarin gas couldn't care less about
climate change or globalization.
Most of the violent rioters are typically white upper-class elites,
probably like yourself.
Once again the boomer globalist party line asserts itself. As is the ludicrous notion that our western culture and values orginated in poland and not in France and germany. Again such assertions are contrary to history. Regarding Trump mentioning Poland as a cradle of western culture, that was a statement simply to say thanks to polish support to NATO and a snub toward Merkel due to her refusal to reform the EU and curb Muslim immigration. Those particular lines were also to throw a bone to the neocons, not because Trump actually believes that. Only neocons would be foolish enough to actually believe that Poland was a main progenitor of western values. Western Culture originated with the Frankish Empire and the defeat of the Muslim invasion of western Europe by Charles Martel in 732 ad. After the victory over the Muslims the franks gradually embraced a policy of supporting the church in Rome against the church's local enemies and as support in the church's disputes with the byzantine emperor in Constantinople. Later when Charlemagne conquered most of what became europe the papacy legitimized his right to rule by proclaiming that it represented the rebirth of the western roman empire, this was in 800 ad. When the Frankish empire collapsed during the 840s, the treaty of Verdun acknowledged France, Germany and Lotharingia (the low countries and italy) as independent nations in 843 Ad . That was the birth of western civilization. Poland however was not incorporated into the west until at least the 11th century
Poland also missed several crucial developments in the evolution of western culture and politics. Most notably the age of absolutism that lasted from roughly 1650 to 1850. In this era nations would implement policies that usually centralized the state to be directly subordinate to the monarch. The power of the local aristocracy in most countries was severely curtailed and the armed forces in those countries would be professionalized and made answerable directly to the monarch. The curbed aristocracy would be converted into the officer corps of these armies. Such reforms were pioneered in France under Louis XIV and later implemented in Spain, Austria, Prussia, Russia, Sweden, even to a limited extent in the ottoman empire as well. Poland missed this era and because of that first lost territory to its neighbors and then eventually was conquered entirely and partitioned by Austria, Prussia, and Russia. In sum the idea of poland as a cradle to western values is highly dubious.
Maybe Trump used the term 'cradle' to refer to one of the last countries in the West were white people are not openly attacked (both physically and socially) because they are white? Maybe he believes the term means something alone the lines of 'redoubt'? If that's the case, then what Trump said is true.
Trump is thanking Poland for its support for NATO and criticizing Merkel for her handling of the EU and not curbing Muslim immigration. That was the likely motivation for the speech as well as to improve relations and establish possible cooperation with Russia. My criticism is not directed at Trump and his policy, but at neocons who interpret the speech as that Poland was somehow a greater contributor to the formation of western civilization than the Frankish empire which later split into France, Germany and Italy. Such a belief would simply be contrary to the historical record.
Most of the violent rioters are typically white upper-class elites,
probably like yourself.
No, not like me; far from it, John.
From Bloomberg News
As the summit concluded on Saturday, tens of thousands of protesters gathered for a mass rally and march through the city that went off largely without incident, with protesters waving colorful banners with insignia for Germany’s anti-capitalist Left party, Turkish and Kurdish dissident groups, and labor and environmental organizations.
Police estimated about 50,000 turned out for the “Solidarity Without Borders” demonstration, while organizers put the number at more than 75,000.
Immigration supporters and immigrants made up a large component of the 'protesters' (looters).
And finally this from one of Merkel's cronies
“The brutality, with the extremely violent chaos in Hamburg yesterday and the day before, is incomprehensible and outrageous,” German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said, calling for the prosecution of those who committed such acts. “They are not protesters, they are criminals.”
Are the rioters "useful idiots"? In political jargon, a useful idiot is a person perceived as a propagandist for a cause the goals of which they are not fully aware of, and who is used cynically by the leaders of the cause. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
Christianity - Poland, and Russia
Poland was concurred, divided and subjugated., and today appears united and Christian.
Russia was concurred and subjugated by the communists and made into an "atheist" country. But today there is a rebirth of the Russian Orthodox Church
"Further to the surprise of many Americans, particularly Evangelical Christians, Vladimir Putin carries a Christian cross with him at all times. Vladimir Putin has frequently praised the Russian Orthodox Church for “educating citizens in a spirit of patriotism and love of country, passing on love for spiritual values and history.” For his part, Russian Patriarch Kirill said that he hoped that the Lord would help Putin “in performing the high task God gave him.” Kirill also praised the prime minister for the way Putin managed the economic crisis, which has had a greater impact in Russia than elsewhere in the world."
The Trump/Putin meeting was suppose to last 30 minutes, it lasted about 2 and 1/4 hours. Observers said the two got along well.
It appears that Trump and Putin are pushing Christianity and Western civilization. hmmm Allies?
Again Dr Gorka was on Fox yesterday. This time in a very clear statement regarding North Korea, he said - paraphrasing - the US is a hyper-power and has various options, which he would not discuss.
Just that the US has various options and would not go into detail. He came across ( just my impression ) like a guy at a bar who is being threatened by another guy with a knife, but he caries a gun.
-----------------
Regarding my above Christianity Trump/Putin post just a thought.
If Putin is reviving Christianity in Russia ( they are refurbishing their churches and monasteries ), and Trump appears to be reviving Christianity, giving it respect in the US, Is this revival in both countries the reason why much of the "atheist" left and much of the mainstream media are against both? --- The left and the media who both appear to be globalist and anti Christian?
( side note, I have been in Russia in the last few years, Moscow and a few western Russian cities.-- Outside of the language and a few architectural differences, it had a remarkably similar feeling to the US. I traveled down the Volga and in many places it looked and felt like a river in Wisconsin! )
I think John is insightful for pointing out the analogy between Trump's phraseology in his Polish speech and the situation before WW2 in which there was a lot of evidence that Hitler would be invading Europe eventually (and Britain too), while the British were talking "peace in our time" and other such "pull the hat over your eyes" attitudes.
It's unclear how much influence the Generational Dynamics way of looking at things may have on the Trump administration - but certainly they at least have its predictions of potential futures in mind, whereas every other recent administration (either Republican or Democrat) seems to be oblivious to any potential impacts of longer-time-scale historico-futurological effects (of which Generational Dynamics analysis is one prime example).
We need to be more cognizant of long-term possibilities and probabilistic eventualities with regards to such entities as North Korea and China, if we want to be vigilant against the possibility of WW3 (somewhat along the lines of what John lays out - although I confess I don't quite understand how he got to the conclusion of Iran being on our side, when the Saudis are at this very moment striking out viciously against Iran and Hezbollah and any Mideast countries aligned with Iran that have the common feature of being sponsors of terrorism).
North Korea is (at the moment anyway) all about the ego of its dictator. Anything coming out of his mouth (or their propaganda agencies, which amounts to the same) does not make any sense. They justify building a nuclear arsenal as a "defense" against the evil United States. Of course, that has the ring of our former Cold-War motivation for a U.S. arsenal against the evil of Communism - but the difference is that the latter was a fact of the time, while the former is pure fiction.
It's an interesting thing trying to deal with a crazy man. I had a (sociologically) interesting experience last weekend when I spent the night at the Chicago bus station, and a nice gentleman sat next to me and seemingly wanted to chat, so I obliged. He was interesting enough to talk to, and by all means was not what I would characterize as "dumb" or even "illiterate" - but three sentences in I realized that he was totally crazy. According to him, he graduated from Yale at the age of 5. It was quite challenging to carry on a conversation with him. Mostly, you had to just smile at his nonsequiturs, and perhaps throw in some true statement once in a while that was generally related to the topic of the moment - if there even was such a thing for such an attempted conversation. Later on, I realized that trying to come to some sensible fact+logic-based agreement with the North Korean child dictator was somewhat analogous to trying to logically come to some conclusion based on the facts, with my erstwhile conversation partner in Chicago (who was capable of making up nonsense at a machine-gun rate).
One thing I can say is that it's a good thing our Korean policy is not decided by the press/TV-commentators (or by Merkel for that matter). Listening to some TV analysts discuss the whole thing after Korea launched a new, bigger (Los Angeles caliber) ICBM to "celebrate" America's 4th of July, the consensus they came to was that we should just send in an assassination team into Korea to take out the child/idiot dictator. Well, that would just prove his idiot remarks about the "evil U.S." to be correct, and justify his goal of becoming a nuclear power (e.g., to discourage such potential assassination attempts). I'm wondering, couldn't the TV analysts find a better caliber of idiot to interview as a so-called expert?
I think a better short-term policy re North Korea might be two-fold:
(1) Shoot down every rocket test launch that they do from here on out. We have the capability, whether it be via the Navy's Aegis system or the ground-based system that perhaps is not quite set up yet. Up til now, we have given their tests "a pass" since by the trajectory we could see that it was not a threat to us or our allies or our naval fleet. I say that's a wrong policy, because it lets them get telemetry data as to how successful their launch is, and how accurate it is relative to its intended target destination. If we blow it up prematurely, they'll never know if it could have gone the whole distance without blowing up of its own accord. We should state in public our new policy that, after this latest provocation, we will pull the plug on any of their future rocket tests. We should shoot it down right at the point that it reaches airspace 12-miles out from their coastline (or from South Korea's coastline if headed in that direction) - so that the falling pieces are not likely to land on any humans, and it nominally respects the North Korean territorial boundaries. Shoot it down as soon as possible after that point. Or if headed toward South Korean airspace, at the earliest opportunity, obviously. With this new policy, the more rockets they launch the better - each one we shoot down is one less missile in their arsenal, plus it gives us target practice, like clay pigeons for a shotgun. I say to North Korea - "Pull!"
(2) We need to stop harping on China to jump in there and use their leverage to help calm the North Korea situation. Believe me, China has no leverage, since North Korea is willing to let all its population starve (in light of whatever trade embargoes are implemented) just so it can continue to have fun with rockets and bombs. China is already doing what it can. It apparently has 100s of thousands of troops lined up on the North Korea border, just in case. We should be more worried about any Chinese solution than about trying to get China to help out. Once China sends in the troops, does anyone imagine they will stop at annexing North Korea, rather than marching on and annexing the whole peninsula? And right now China is all about their economy. The above-mentioned reporters stated that trade between China and North Korea was up 40% - so much for China putting on the economic thumbscrews. I can't really blame China for not thrumb-screwing North Korea - because North Korea might attack China just to force China to fight back and make China look like the bad guy in public opinion.
Long-term, North Korea is a mere thorn in the side, whereas China is rapidly approaching the point where it could take out our entire Pacific fleet with a surprise attack analogous to Pearl Harbor. They have submarines that have supersonic torpedoes, and we don't. That means that evasive maneuvers against such torpedoes are ineffective. We lose all our aircraft carriers on day one of such a hypothetical surprise attack. Without the aircraft carriers, the rest of our Navy is just a bunch of small boats floating around, that can be taken out one at a time in a mop up operation. They don't even need to attack Pearl Harbor initially - they can just surround it with subs, and pick off any ships attempting to either return to base or pull out-of-harbor to join the fight. Their motivation to take the land of Hawaii would more be motivated by the new-found ability to launch shorter-range missiles (than what would otherwise be needed) against Los Angeles.
So when some expert claims the U.S. is a hyper-power, that's correct - right up until the moment that it's not correct, since we just got taken out by newer technology. Technology that was financed and made technologically possible by the billions of trade dollars we gave China (just so you and I could buy a T-shirt at Walmart for five dollars instead of ten dollars - so enjoy that T-shirt). So, as much as it's a potential drain on our economy, I think Trump is right for pursuing a round of military modernizing and build-up, lest we get caught with our pants down (but a surplus of T-shirts).